BIM_SIG_056 Architect Special Interest Group October 2014 (pm)

In this session we looked at solar studies, looking at a project that requires careful control over solar shading. In the first instance we might want to run the shading north-south. The initial thought is that running the shading north-south would leave the outdoor areas exposed to the noon sun, so it might be better to run the shading east-west because that would give better protection at lunchtime. It doesn’t take long to create a solar study, so it’s a good idea to use these at an early stage of the process to make sure that your building your projects to the highest quality you can.

Topics covered

• Drawing a quick building using walls and slabs to create the project
• creating vertical louvres using a plug-in called elements (it was called frangisole), this has been covered in an earlier post, this is easy to create using curtain walls in Vectorworks 2015 Architect
• Using the Framing Member to create rafters, then using the move by points tool to create duplicates (you could also use Duplicate Array…)
• Create a ground object for the solar study, this could be a large circle with the cardinal points located
• by using two circles and two lines we can create a solar indicator to give the North, East, South, and West indicators
• we can create lines between our cardinal points using the command Create Dividing Lines…
• Place a sun using Heliodon tool
• editing the time of the day or the day of the year using the Heliodon tool
• using the Heliodon tool to create a solar study
• checking the movie of the solar study to make sure that the shadows are shown correctly, then fixing the ground to make the shadows visible
• Using the solar study movie to check the shadows on the building for the different times of the day, the movie allows you to go back and forth to check this shading over the day
• adding more roof shading then making another solar study to check the new effect of the shading
• creating vertical shading panels to shade the windows and doors
• using the Renderworks camera to set up the view for a consistent solar study
• fine-tuning the camera view
• creating another solar study and checking the effect of the vertical shading
• adding doors and windows to the project then recreating the solar study to see the effect of the on the doors and windows shading
• duplicating the camera to create a new view for checking the solar shading on the windows and doors
• adding plant image props to see the effect of neighbouring trees on the project, then recreating the solar study to check the effect of these trees

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